Tuesday 4 October 2011 18.09 EDT
First published on Tuesday 4 October 2011 18.09 EDT

Michael Heseltine once filled the Boris Johnson slot at Conservative conferences: rollicking speech, big blond hair, party hero mistrusted by the leadership. These days his reputation has matured. Absent from the platform in Manchester, he is praised this week instead in the New Statesman by Labour's Andrew Adonis. "In the brilliance of his institutional creativity, Heseltine is matched only by Bevan and Bevin among postwar ministers," he writes. "More shaming for us on the left, he is the best social democratic institution builder of recent decades." Some – remembering the defence secretary's response to Greenham Common – might gasp at that, but Lord Adonis has a point. Heseltine conveyed a proactive spirit of enterprise: a sense that the state could make great things happen. His monuments are physical – in east London's Docklands and the Millennium Dome too (but everyone makes mistakes). "Where Hezza failed, he was usually right," Lord Adonis adds. "He was right to oppose the poll tax, right to highlight the social crisis after the Toxteth riots, right in the Westland crisis." He promised to "intervene before breakfast, before lunch, before tea and before dinner" to promote British business: the sort of optimistic, activist character the coalition lacks. Some Tories who remember his pro-Europeanism and role in deposing Mrs Thatcher will never forgive him, but he cared about cities, cared about industry, and showed that, in politics, daring and a bit of flamboyance are assets.